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This is a normal post
of course, but Catholic people tend to believe in a lot of stuff they're not really supposed to. Very superstitious lot also.
 (I helped save b3ta! feckler https://twitter.com/LeonardEctric1, Thu 24 Jan 2013, 12:01, , Reply)
This is a normal post Surely it's the Catholisism that is their biggest superstition?*
*applies to all religions
 (I helped save b3ta! TownsendsPublisher is all gravy baby, Thu 24 Jan 2013, 12:08, , Reply)
This is a normal post no,
superstition and religion are different things.
 (I helped save b3ta! Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Thu 24 Jan 2013, 12:12, , Reply)
This is a normal post That's an opinion

(I helped save b3ta! TownsendsPublisher is all gravy baby, Thu 24 Jan 2013, 12:14, , Reply)
This is a normal post no it isn't.
they are defined differently. But you just go "hurr hurr religious people are stupid amirite AMIRITE" if you want, I won't bother to engage you, even if everybody else rallies round to slap you on the back.
 (I helped save b3ta! Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Thu 24 Jan 2013, 12:19, , Reply)
This is a normal post Superstition
and organised Superstition

Touching wood? Religious origin
Throwing spilled salt? Religious origin
Fear of 13? Religious origin
etc

You're right, they are so different
 (I helped save b3ta! TownsendsPublisher is all gravy baby, Thu 24 Jan 2013, 12:25, , Reply)
This is a normal post none of those things are of religious origin.
you'll find plenty of Christians doing these things but you won't find any sanction for them in the Bible, or anyone preaching them from the pulpit.
 (I helped save b3ta! Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Thu 24 Jan 2013, 12:39, , Reply)
This is a normal post
Touching the wood of the cross
The devil jogging your arm
The necessity to prove the sanctity of the number 12

How are they not of religious origin?

Psychic Sally is no more of a charlatan than the organised religions of this world. It's just they're in a bigger gang
 (I helped save b3ta! TownsendsPublisher is all gravy baby, Thu 24 Jan 2013, 13:04, , Reply)
This is a normal post touching wood has nothing to do with the cross,
it's to do with pre-Christian pagan reverence of tree spirits. I never even heard that explanation.
The "devil" might be a character in Christianity but there's no Christian logic to the salt thing.
Nobody has to prove the sanctity of the number 12. What does that even mean?

What you seem to be doing is confusing things that religious people made up, with things that come from religion. Isaac Newton was religious, and well into the occult as well, I guess calculus must be superstition.
 (I helped save b3ta! Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Thu 24 Jan 2013, 13:28, , Reply)
This is a normal post
And what you seem to be doing is suggesting that there is a difference between "things that religious people made up" and "things that come from religion"

Religion is just something that religious people made up
 (I helped save b3ta! TownsendsPublisher is all gravy baby, Thu 24 Jan 2013, 13:42, , Reply)
This is a normal post Indeed, the current books of the bible were cherry picked from a much larger assortment of religious writings.
They essentially "made it up" like a collage is made from cut out bits from other photos.

But hey, people are welcome to believe whatever they want so long as the leave my embassy alone.
 (I helped save b3ta! Cerebus Sticky! Sticky! Stick! Stick!, Thu 24 Jan 2013, 13:49, , Reply)
This is a normal post going a bit off on a tangent here,
but I've read some of the other books that weren't included. Some of them are very strange. Bel and the Dragon is a highlight.
 (I helped save b3ta! Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Thu 24 Jan 2013, 13:54, , Reply)
This is a normal post Well i'm glad they filtered out all the strange and only left the sensible ones in.

(I helped save b3ta! Cerebus Sticky! Sticky! Stick! Stick!, Thu 24 Jan 2013, 14:26, , Reply)
This is a normal post haha
it's all relative I suppose.
 (I helped save b3ta! Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Thu 24 Jan 2013, 14:31, , Reply)
This is a normal post Religion is something that religious people made up,
ok let's accept that. But that doesn't mean that everything a religious person makes up is religion.

What I'm trying to say is, superstition is a specific sort of made up thing, that isn't made up because of someone's religious beliefs (although it may be rationalised with them) but can be made up by anybody for any reason. The simple explanation is that people are just weird. And a lot of superstitions might have originally been jokes, carried on because they were funny, and then carried on because they were familiar. Like the memes we have on here.

There is no concept of good or bad luck in Christianity. You won't find any discussion of black cats or breaking mirrors in the Theology books, other than perhaps to condemn such beliefs.
 (I helped save b3ta! Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Thu 24 Jan 2013, 13:50, , Reply)
This is a normal post Macbeth!

(I helped save b3ta! Cerebus Sticky! Sticky! Stick! Stick!, Thu 24 Jan 2013, 12:40, , Reply)
This is a normal post Now, I'm *really* going to regret this, but:
How so? Unless by religion you mean "institutionalised religion". I think, at the core, they're fundamentally the same thing.
 (I helped save b3ta! Tab Hunter Make this useless process end and so, begin again, Thu 24 Jan 2013, 12:18, , Reply)
This is a normal post Superstition is really more like a sort of naive science,
things that are "bad luck," sympathetic magic etc are laws of nature rather than caused by supernatural forces or beings. Quite a lot of people I know are superstitious but also atheists, new agers typically describe themselves as naturalists. It's nonsensical causality resulting from various cognitive biases, otherwise called "magical thinking".

Religion is a belief in some kind of intelligent purpose behind the universe, that transcends it, and is due some kind of worship. I don't know if an institution is necessary for someone to be religious.

A lot of religious people are superstitious, though, as some religions give a kind of outlet for it.
 (I helped save b3ta! Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Thu 24 Jan 2013, 12:31, , Reply)
This is a normal post Now, I'm not wanting an argument on metaphyics with you,
but surely every point you've made is subjective semantics, nothing more.
 (I helped save b3ta! Tab Hunter Make this useless process end and so, begin again, Thu 24 Jan 2013, 13:01, , Reply)
This is a normal post I don't know how a point about the meaning of words could be anything else.
Although actually I find it very hard to define religion. Superstition seems far easier to put my finger on, but the problem with religion is that it doesn't form a coherent class of things. I don't know why Buddhism should be a religion, and communism not one. There's no god in Buddhism, it's more like a sort of folk psychology.

I think it's made more difficult by the fact that superstition and religion aren't mutually exclusive. You can be both. In fact they seem to exist in a sort of cycle, religions can turn into superstitions once people forget what they are about but carry on going through the motions. (Is Christmas a superstition?) While superstitions can become religions if they get rationalised and worked into a metaphysical framework. Certain religious ideas, for instance, Karma, seem quite superstitious. See Just World Hypothesis.

Maybe an example would help. I think if you believe there is a god who can answer your prayers, that's religions. If you believe in "the power of prayer", as if praying had power in itself without divine intervention, that's superstitious. It's not just "believing in things you can't see". It's believing that the things you can see somehow react in spookily (in)convenient ways (which is often confirmed by experience because of confirmation bias).

Another example. I've never heard of anyone say that homeopathy worked because of gods, it's because "water has memory" somehow; they rationalise it pseudoscientifically.
 (I helped save b3ta! Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Thu 24 Jan 2013, 13:21, , Reply)
This is a normal post it's the old neolithic shamanism coming back out from under the catholic rug,
under which it was swept from the 4th century onwards. I don't know why these kinds of beliefs are coming back into fashion now, but it's much like the last days of the Roman Empire.
 (I helped save b3ta! Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Thu 24 Jan 2013, 12:10, , Reply)
This is a normal post *invests in fiddles and fire extinguishers*

(I helped save b3ta! Cerebus Sticky! Sticky! Stick! Stick!, Thu 24 Jan 2013, 12:18, , Reply)
This is a normal post
well, I won't claim to know anything about that, but coming from a family of Catholics, all the women (it does tend to be women for some reason) in my extended family, and many (most?) of their Catholic female friends have all visited psychics, most have at least 2 or 3 Doris Stokes books, watch and chat about Derek Acorah's latest TV show etc...not a scientfic study but I know a lot of wmen and most of the Catholic ones seem to lap up this 'beyond the grave' stuff.
 (I helped save b3ta! feckler https://twitter.com/LeonardEctric1, Thu 24 Jan 2013, 12:37, , Reply)
This is a normal post non-Catholics and even non-Christians seem no less taken in by it, in my experience.
it seems paradoxical that people who don't believe in God should believe in immortal souls but they still do. My mum believes that every dog she gets is the reincarnation of the last one. My gran believes in Tarot and auras etc.
 (I helped save b3ta! Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Thu 24 Jan 2013, 12:43, , Reply)
This is a normal post
I'm not saying its exclusively johnny-dodgers, but they do seem to be more prone to it.
 (I helped save b3ta! feckler https://twitter.com/LeonardEctric1, Thu 24 Jan 2013, 12:46, , Reply)
This is a normal post I don't know I need to see a graph.
but it does seem to be mostly women
 (I helped save b3ta! Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Thu 24 Jan 2013, 12:47, , Reply)